This invention relates to a heat accumulator.
There have been many proposals for arrangements for recovering or obtaining thermal energy, in particular from sources such as solar radiation or engine exhaust gases or the atmosphere or other fluids. Generally these arrangements comprise means for trapping the energy and transforming it or utilising it.
Nevertheless, the accumulation of such energy is difficult in practice, and there are serious problems in connection with the capacity and bulk and the thermal insulation of heat reservoirs. In practice these reservoirs are generally reservoirs of water heated by the trapped thermal energy and releasing the absorbed energy according to requirements. Also known are so-called "solid accumulators" for example in the form of a stack of refractory stone blocks or the like accumulating the heat and releasing it under the effect of circulating air or other fluid.
Nevertheless, such accumulators must be of large dimensions in order to allow a sufficient storage capacity, because of low amounts of heat in each unit of volume, and therefore not allowing an economical installation in many instances.
Moreover the existing heat accumulators do not usually permit a wide range of easy employment, for example by transport without loss of stored energy from a production point to a utilisation site.
One object of the present invention is to obviate or mitigate the disadvantages indicated above.